


Faraway, So Close

by araydre, PR Zed (przed)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Comfort, Everyone Needs A Hug, Light Angst, M/M, Multi, OT3, Polyamory, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-27 19:12:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15031391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/araydre/pseuds/araydre, https://archiveofourown.org/users/przed/pseuds/PR%20Zed
Summary: When Cap finally finds him, Barnes is not what you expect. He's not the murderous cyborg in the video from D.C.  And he's not the charming GI from the Smithsonian exhibit and your father's stories.  He's a quiet shadow, hiding his eyes behind a fall of dark hair and hunching his shoulders to make himself seem smaller.  He keeps Cap between himself and the world, his gaze constantly darting nervously around as he checks for threats and exits.Tony Stark is determined to give Cap a home and give Barnes back his memories, but he has no idea how much they're going to give him in return.





	Faraway, So Close

**Author's Note:**

> A big thank you to araydre for creating such inspiring art. I'd never written this particular OT3 before, but her version of these boys was irresistible.
> 
> Thanks to my beta, [halotolerant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/profile), for saving me from myself, and to the Reverse Big Bang mods for doing such a great job organizing the event and making participating a pleasure.

 

"Thanks, Tony." 

Cap sits across the lab bench from you. He's bruised and battered, his face stitched up in two places. He's hunched in his seat and while he's trying to smile, his expression is pinched, as if he's still in some pain. Given how fast he usually heals, you don't even want to know what he looked like 48 hours ago. "I wasn't quite sure where to go. My place in D.C. still has bullet holes in it."

"Well, hey, _mi casa, su casa_." You'd been disappointed when Cap moved to D.C. in the first place. You're glad to have him back in New York, and ecstatic that he's agreed to stay in the Tower, but it would have been nice if it was under better circumstances. "I wish…" you start to say.

"What do you wish, Tony?" Cap nudges you when you don't continue.

"I wish you'd come to me for help before you were homeless. Before you and Natasha decided to take on SHIELD by yourselves."

"We had help."

"Oh, yeah, I forgot your friend with the wings. I meant real help. Avengers help."

"Sam _is_ real help." You're glad to finally hear some fire in his voice. "But to answer your question, at first, I didn't think it _was_ an Avengers situation." Cap grimaces and glances down to where he has his fingers laced together. "And by the time I realized how bad things really were…" He doesn't need to finish that thought.

You've never seen Cap this beaten before, not even after the Battle of New York. He looks like he's lost a war. You get a chill down your spine, the sudden realization that there's more going on than you understand.

"Just how bad are things?" you ask.

"Besides SHIELD being Hydra?" Cap shrugs and keeps his eyes down. He doesn't say anything else for the longest time, and when he does speak, you're not sure where he's going. "Did you see the reports? From Washington?"

"Yeah." You nod. "I read some of what Natasha leaked to the world. And then she came and talked to me once she was done with the hearings in Washington."

"Did she tell you about the Winter Soldier?" Cap's voice sounds like it's made of brittle glass.

"Just that you fought him."

"She didn't tell you who he is?" Cap clenches his hands together so tightly that you can see the skin stretch taut across his knuckles.

"No." You shake your head and wonder what it is about Hydra's pet assassin that has Cap so upset.

"He's…" Cap pauses, and swallows, and tries again. "He _was_ Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky Barnes. My best friend."

You know who Barnes was. Your father wouldn't shut up about him and Cap. " _They were good men, Rogers and Barnes_ ," he told you more than once, the implied _better than you_ always in the background. " _They were all good men. Dugan, Jones, Morita, Falsworth and Dernier, too. But Rogers and Barnes were the best_."

You grew up hating Cap and Barnes, the way they seemed to have stolen all of Howard Stark's affection before you were even born. You hated them and admired them and tried to be just like them, working to earn your father's approval and affection even after his death. You were so jealous of two dead men.

Except it seems that neither of them was dead after all. And it turns out you absolutely don't hate Cap. 

"How the hell…" you start to say, working out how Barnes could have survived his supposed death, considering everything you know about the man. It takes you about seven seconds to figure it out. "Zola."

"Zola," Cap agrees. "He experimented on Bucky in Kreischberg. Must have given him a variant of Erskine's formula. And it was good enough to save him when he fell from that train."

"Jesus," you breathe out.

"Yeah," Cap says. You can see his chest rising and falling, the rhythm irregular. "Bucky didn't…he didn't know me in Washington. Not until the end."

"He nearly killed you." You look at the damage to Cap's face with a new understanding. A new horror. "You _let_ him nearly kill you."

"He was my best friend," Cap says again, spreading his hands open, palms up, in front of him. A gesture of surrender. 

"What are you going to do?" you ask.

"I'm going to find him."

"Let me know if I can help."

"Thank you, Tony." He rises, slowly, and starts to leave the lab, moving gingerly, as if all of his ninety-plus years have suddenly swept over him. "I will."

 

**

Cap heals and trains and plans, and then he disappears from the Tower for weeks at a time, sometimes with Wilson, following leads the two of them have dug up with help from JARVIS, and sometimes with Natasha, chasing down spectres from her shadowy past.

While Cap goes after Barnes, you delve into the science that turned him into an enemy assassin. You read the file Natasha found in Kiev, ragged pages interleaved with faded photographs of a young man made into a monster. You read the reports of what it took to break Barnes: sleep deprivation, drugs, surgery, electroshock, cryostasis. The reports of years of torture aimed at taming one man make you feel sick. What Hydra did to him would have broken most people. Would have killed them. But from the reports and what Cap has told you, Barnes fought them until the end. 

You start doing research into mental conditioning, into neuroscience, into advanced cyborg implants, looking for ways you can undo what Hydra has done.

You're working on a system to visualize and neutralize traumatic memories when Cap appears in your lab again. He looks even more distressed than he had after the helicarriers had gone down, after he'd found Barnes was still alive.

"What's wrong?" you ask. You worry that Barnes is dead.

"Nat snuck us into Russia. To the middle of nowhere, outside Yakutsk," he says.

"I thought Yakutsk was just a place on the Risk board."

"It's real," he says, his voice hollow. "We found another Hydra base there."

"Did you find Barnes?"

"No." He clenches his jaw, as if he's steeling himself for something, and you come alert. "But we found more records on the Winter Soldier project." He swallows, hard. "I found a list of the Soldier's targets."

Cap looks so upset, you should guess what's coming. But you don't. You have an extra 30 seconds of ignorance. Thirty seconds of innocence.

"Tony." Cap's mouth works, but no words come out.

"It's okay," you reassure him. "You can tell me. Whatever it is, you can tell me."

Cap nods and swallows and closes his eyes. He takes in a deep breath, opens his eyes, looks at you, and speaks.

"The Winter Soldier killed your parents."

The world freezes around you and your brain shrieks its denial.

"That's not possible," you say. "My parents died in a car crash. There was an investigation. An inquest. It was an accident."

"I saw the file. I brought it back with me." He holds out a manila folder with Cyrillic script stamped on it. You recoil from it as if it were a venomous snake. 

"I can't…" Heart pounding, you spin away from him, not entirely sure what it is you can't do.

You need to get out. You need to not be here. You need to escape. You crash through the lab, knocking over equipment and a prototype for the next generation Iron Man suit. JARVIS has the elevator waiting for you without you asking.

"Roof," you say, as the doors close, shutting out you last sight of Cap, looking more worried and lost than you've ever seen him.

Once on the roof, you call the suit, closing your eyes as the components lock in place around you.

"Sir, are you sure this is a good idea?" JARVIS says in his ear as the visor snaps closed.

"No," you rasp out, then blast into the sky, putting the Tower and New York and Cap swiftly behind you.

You concentrate on the roar of the repulsors, on the turbulence in the air, on the display of the suit's status, on anything that means you don't have to think about what the Winter Soldier did to Howard and Maria Stark.

"Your blood pressure and heart rate are elevated and your respiration is uneven, sir," JARVIS informs you. You ignore him, concentrating on the fields and forests and small towns passing beneath you, willing them to quiet the turmoil in your mind. But quiet doesn't come. You wish you had an enemy to fight, an innocent to save, something to occupy your mind besides the terrible thoughts that fill it.

It's dusk when you return to the Tower, and you're starting to have a glimmer of what you need to do. Cap sits waiting for you, his back against a smooth concrete wall, wrists resting lightly on raised knees.

You shed the suit and slump down beside him, keeping a wary distance between you.

The sun is dipping below the horizon, and the lights of New York glitter and twinkle around you.

"I was home from school, from MIT, when it happened," you find yourself saying. "It was Christmas break and I'd been at a party with friends. I think I was still a little drunk when Jarvis, the original Jarvis, woke me up. He'd been retired for a few years, but he still looked in on me, and he was still my father's emergency contact. He told me there'd been an accident."

Beside you, Cap tenses. You think you should shut up, but you can't. You've never told anyone this story before and if you stop talking you don't think you'll ever talk about it again.

"I couldn't take it in at first. The great Howard Stark killed in a car accident? Mom never coming home again? Impossible." You think about the horrible creeping sense of unreality that had descended on you in that early morning gloom.

"I insisted on being the one to identify the bodies. I thought that might make it more real. And that I owed them at least that." The image of your father, his faced smashed in, and your mother, her throat crushed and eyes wide with what looked like surprise, is burned indelibly into your memory. "That was a mistake."

"I'll leave," Cap says as he starts to stand. "I have to find him, Tony. I can't leave him out there, alone. But I won't bring him to your home."

Part of you wants to let him go, but that's not why you told him about your parents. That's not what you've decided has to happen. You grab hold of his wrist, and pull him back down beside you.

"You should stay."

"Tony, you don't..."

You cut him off before he can say anything more.

"You should stay," you repeat, emphasizing each word. 

"But..."

"The people who killed my parents? They tried to kill your friend, too. They tried to erase him. To turn him into a weapon." You've read Barnes' file over and over again, until you practically have it memorized. The men who wrote it thought of Barnes only as a weapon, a tool. They viewed his humanity as an inconvenience to be eradicated.

"The way I see it, if I help Barnes, I'm helping defeat those bastards."

You're both silent for a few long moments. It's Cap who speaks first.

"Thank you, Tony." His voice is rough, and barely a whisper.

"You're welcome," you say.

You both stay on the roof, watching quietly as the sky darkens and all the lights of the city blink on beneath you.

 

**

When Cap finally finds him, Barnes is not what you expect. He's not the murderous cyborg in the video from D.C. And he's not the charming GI from the Smithsonian exhibit and your father's stories. He's a quiet shadow, hiding his eyes behind a fall of dark hair and hunching his shoulders to make himself seem smaller. He keeps Cap between himself and the world, his gaze constantly darting nervously around as he checks for threats and exits.

He and Cap hole up on Cap's floor in the Tower for two days before you can coax them out again to give Barnes a tour. You show him the common areas, the medical wing, the labs, Cap staying protectively at his side all the while. He's still hunched over, still obscuring his face behind long dark hair, and he doesn't let his guard down around you once.

Then, when you're showing him the gym and shooting range you've built for the Avengers, things go from bad to worse.

Cap moves out of the locker room ahead of you both, leaving you caught between him and Barnes. Barnes immediately shrinks against the opposite wall. You can see the dread in his eyes and hear his laboured breathing.

You know what a panic attack looks like. More importantly, you know what one feels like. The way your skin goes clammy, the way your breathing goes harsh in your throat. The way you can't trust that what you're seeing is real. These days your panic attacks tend to centre on alien weapons and buildings shattering and you pushing a nuke into outer space. Who knows what nightmares Barnes is seeing when he's in this state.

Whatever Barnes sees, you're determined not to make it worse.

"It's okay," you say quietly, putting up your hands and taking another two steps back, putting as much distance between you as you can. You give him a clear escape route, a way back to Cap. "You're safe, Barnes. You're at the Tower. Cap is in the next room."

"Cap?" He looks confused.

"Steve," you correct yourself.

"Steve," Barnes whispers, and the name seems to bring him back from wherever it is he'd gone to. He blinks rapidly a couple of times, then nods at you.

"Thanks, Stark," he growls out, then gives what he might think is a smile but looks more like a grimace.

"Everything okay?" Cap says as he pops back into the locker room, a worried look on his face.

"Okay, fine, yeah, everything's fine," you say, not wanting to make too much of what just happened. 

Cap gives you a skeptical look, then turns to Barnes.

"I'm fine." His voice already sounds stronger, just having Cap in the room with him. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Stevie. You're such a mother hen." He rolls his eyes at you, and a surprised laugh bursts from your throat. Barnes may be a traumatized vet who suffered decades of torture, but it seems like deep down he's an annoying little shit who's not above taunting his best friend.

"Oh, I like him, Cap," you blurt out with a grin.

Barnes smiles back at you, and for a moment there are no shadows in his eyes, there is no hunch to his shoulders. For a moment, you see the Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes that your father must have known.

It's only a moment, then he closes down, becoming a quiet shadow in Cap's wake once again. But now that you've caught a glimpse of the real Barnes, the one hidden under all that trauma, you're more determined than ever to help bring him out again.

**

For the next week, you don't see much of Barnes. 

He comes to the common room for one team dinner, but he doesn't stray far from Cap's side, and disappears back to their shared floor as soon as he's wolfed down a heaping plate of pad thai. And you come upon him and Cap in the gym once, both of them effortlessly lifting weights that would crush a normal, unenhanced human, but as soon as they see you they quickly finish up their workout. Barnes keeps his eyes down, and Cap flashes you an uneasy smile as they leave.

When Cap comes down to your lab to discuss Avengers business, you offer to find someone who can help Barnes—one of the therapists or psychiatrists or neurosurgeons you consulted when you were researching what had been done to him—but Cap shakes his head.

"No doctors," he says. "Bucky doesn't trust doctors." And you don't blame the guy for that, with what doctors have done to him over the decades. "He'll be fine," Cap insists. "He just needs time."

You give them time. 

They disappear completely for two weeks. 

JARVIS confirms Cap and Barnes are in the Tower, that they're still alive, but won't tell you anything else. You built JARVIS' privacy protocols to protect the Tower's residents, but right now you wish you hadn't been quite so scrupulous.

Then, late one night when you're working on next generation nano technology, developing a way to use it for your suit's outer shell, Cap shows up in your lab.

There's no other way to put it: Cap looks like shit.

There are bruises under his eyes, his mouth looks like it hasn't smiled in a century and he's got the same hunched look to his shoulders that Barnes has.

"Are you okay?" you ask. Which is stupid, because clearly he's not.

"It's Bucky," he says. Of course it's Barnes. No one else could make Cap look like he's just witnessed the end of the world. "We need help."

The two of you go up to the floor he shares with Barnes. You haven't been here at all since Barnes arrived, but you know it was neater the last time you visited Cap. Now there are dishes in the sink and books and papers strewn around the living room. Cap leads you to through to the back, where he knocks lightly on one of the bedroom doors.

"Buck? I brought Tony." Cap opens the door and guides you inside with a hand on your shoulder.

If Cap looks like shit, Barnes looks ten times worse. He's sitting on the bed, his back against the wall, his arms clutched around his knees drawn up against his chest. His hair is lank and hanging in his face. His shoulders match Cap's, and he's hiding his face in his knees.

Cap sits deliberately on the bed, rubbing Barnes' back gently as he leans in close to him.

"Tony will help us."

"No one can help me," Barnes says, his voice a soft growl that you have to strain to hear. "I can't sleep. I close my eyes and all I see is blood and death."

You're an engineer, not a psychiatrist or psychologist or therapist. For all the research you've been doing since you found out about what was done to Barnes, you're better at working with machines than people. Especially severely traumatized people. Hell, you _are_ a severely traumatized person.

But you do have one project that might help Barnes.

You've been working on your memory visualization system: Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing. (You really need to get the SI marketing whizzes on coming up with a better name for the fucking thing than B.A.R.F.) Like all your most dangerous tech, you tested it on yourself first, reliving the night your parents died, giving yourself permission to let someone else identify the bodies, to let Jarvis and Ana look after you, if only for that night.

It helped.

But when you tell Barnes about B.A.R.F., he presses further against the wall behind him.

"I don't need help remembering the bad shit," he says. You can't see his face, but you can hear the tears in his voice. "It was the good memories those bastards took away from me."

And yeah, that shouldn't be so much harder to set up than what the rig already does.

You go back to the lab, already thinking about how you can recalibrate the system, have it search the hippocampus for markers of happiness instead of sorrow, of pleasure instead of pain, have it make those memories even more vivid.

You work for 72 hours straight, relying on coffee and Red Bull, and, in a move that was one part genius inspiration and two parts terrible lapse of judgment, coffee brewed with Red Bull, to stay awake as you rebuild the system and the code that runs it. When the work is done, you let yourself sleep for the seven hours that JARVIS insists is the minimum you need, and then you do what you always do: you test the system on yourself.

You relive your sixth birthday.

That day hadn't started well. Your parents had gone to Paris or Hong Kong or someplace exotic, leaving you with the promise that they'd celebrate your birthday when they returned. But Jarvis and Ana had turned it into one of your fondest memories.

You watch as Jarvis and Ana take an impossibly young version of yourself to the Natural History Museum, then to the zoo in Central Park, and finally back to the mansion for the Dobos cake Ana only made for special occasions. "And your birthday is the most special occasion, _csillagom_ ," Ana tells you with a hug.

Watching that day again, experiencing it so vividly, you feel a tension that you hadn't realized was there uncoil in your chest. 

It works.

But before you try it on Barnes, you refine the system even more. You find every record of the Barnes family in existence, loading up the system's database with information on Barnes' parents and sister, on the neighbourhoods he'd lived in, on the schools he and Cap had gone to. You have JARVIS scrape the city archives for information on Brooklyn in the '30s, on Coney Island, on Manhattan. You even talk to Cap, asking him about Barnes' favourite places. You make sure the system can reproduce any location that holds good memories for Barnes, make it vivid enough that he'll believe he's there.

A week and a half after Cap came down to see you, you're ready to give Barnes back a piece of his past.

**

Cap and Barnes arrive at the labs at the appointed time, Barnes still the shadow to Cap's sun. Cap has an easy grip on his elbow, and whispers reassurances to him as they enter.

You lead them to the room where you've set up B.A.R.F., sitting them both at the edge of the visualization array. You've made the system's sensors as small and unobtrusive as you could manage, but Barnes still flinches under your touch when you place the sticky dots on his skull. You don't blame him. His history with scientists and brain scans isn't exactly a good one.

"What do I do now?" Barnes says. He sits in one of the chairs you've had brought down to the labs for them, comfortable, overstuffed armchairs, as far from the monstrosity Hydra used to wipe out his memories as you could manage. He looks lost, shoulders still hunched, hair in his eyes, clutching Cap's hand as if it's his only protection against the world.

You're not tall, but you imagine Barnes has had quite enough scientists looming over him as they experimented on his body and mind. You crouch down beside him so he has a height advantage over you.

"Just relax," you say. "The system will decipher the electrical signals in your hippocampus, find a happy memory, and display it in front of you." You wave at the holographic grid that fills the room in front of you all.

Barnes leans back, but he doesn't exactly relax. Cap sits at his side, his hand protectively on Barnes' shoulder. You sit cross-legged on the floor, pull up the control panel on your tablet, and start the scan of Barnes' memories.

You frown as soon as the image of Barnes' brain emerges. It is, to put it frankly, a mess. In some areas, there are snarls of neural connections that look like nothing so much as tangled wires. In others, connections are abruptly cut off as if they'd been sliced away. You bite your lip as you direct the system, looking for markers of memories that have survived Hydra's torture. You begin to wonder if this is going to work, if you're going to have to admit defeat, when you find it: deep inside the hippocampus there's a place where Barnes' brain seems to have managed to repair itself, the neurons healthy and their connections normal. 

At first nothing seems to happen except for a faint mist filling the spaces inside the holographic grid. Then you think you hear a faint giggle.

"Becky!" a voice shouts, just before a girl of about ten with dark braids, a neat gingham dress and an infectious grin appears in the mist filling the visualization grid.

A breathless teenage boy runs into sight and you hear Cap gasp beside you. The boy has dark wavy hair, and a face that hasn't yet lost its baby fat, but you recognize teenaged James Barnes from the faded photographs JARVIS found for you.

"Rebecca Barnes, you know Ma'll kill me if I lose you here."

The girl sticks out her tongue and rolls her eyes.

"I'm fine, Bucky," she says.

"You may be, but you know Steve can't keep up," the boy says.

A second boy appears, short and skinny and with a shock of blond hair that flops into his eyes. This blond boy is pale and wheezing, and even knowing who it must be it takes you a long moment to see Cap in this scrawny kid.

"Sorry, Steve," the girl says, looking more contrite.

"Jesus, Stevie," Barnes says beside you. "Look at you."

"I remember this," Cap says, his voice struck by wonder.

Before either of them can say any more, the mist resolves into a boardwalk crowded with people, a carousel and Ferris wheel visible in the background. You can practically smell the popcorn and waterfront around them.

"Coney Island," Barnes whispers. 

The three of you watch as the kids in front of you spend a gorgeous summer's day on Coney Island. They share a bag of caramel corn and splash in the water. Steve watches as Barnes takes his sister on the carousel, and Becky laughs as Steve accepts a dare to ride the Cyclone.

"Don't do it, Stevie, you little punk," Barnes says beside you. But little Stevie Rogers can't hear any of you, so you watch as the future Captain America rides a roller coaster, stumbles off, and then throws up in a garbage can. It's the first time you've heard Barnes laugh, the sound startling a laugh out of you, too.

Eventually, the sun sets, teenaged Bucky holds his sister's hand and wraps his arm around his Steve's shoulders and the three of them fade back into mist. Abruptly, you find yourself transported from Coney Island back to the room in the Tower. Beside you, Cap's face is buried in Barnes' shoulder, and Barnes' flesh hand clutches at Cap's arm, both of them trembling with silent sobs.

You feel like you're intruding on something you have no right to see, so you shut down the system as quickly as you can manage, and quietly slip out of the room.

Cap finds you in your main lab an hour later, poking unproductively at a piece of B.A.R.F. code that you think you can make more efficient.

"How's Barnes?" you ask.

"Sleeping," Cap says. You can see his eyes are rimmed in red, but you don't say anything about it. "Peacefully." He smiles, and it's the most open you've ever seen his face.

"I'm glad."

"Me, too." He sits across from you. "Thank you, Tony."

You've spent a lifetime hiding your emotions behind glib words, but Cap seems never to have learned to hide how he feels. There's nothing but sincerity in his eyes, and that draws out an unexpected protectiveness in you. And maybe more truthfulness than Cap needs right now.

"You know this isn't a miracle cure, right?" you say. "He's recovered one memory, but the damage they inflicted on him, it's a lot. It'll take a long time to heal."

"I know." The shadows return to Cap's eyes, and you feel like shit that you've put them there, but lies won't help him or Barnes. 

"And I still think he should talk to a specialist. I'm just an engineer."

"Bucky doesn't like doctors," Cap repeats for the thousandth time. And though you understand why, you don't think the kind of damage you've seen in Barnes' brain is going to repair itself on its own, even with Hydra super soldier serum in his veins.

"I could recommend someone. A non-doctor-y therapist."

"I'll mention it to Bucky." Cap doesn't sound at all optimistic about the prospect of Bucky agreeing. "But can we try your system again?"

He looks so hopeful that you nod immediately.

"B.A.R.F.? Any time, Cap."

"Bucky will appreciate it. He was so happy to finally remember Becky."

Barnes hides out on Cap's floor for a few days, then he and Cap come back to the lab for another session with B.A.R.F. (You really do need to get marketing to come up with a better name.). This time, the recovered memory is a short one: Barnes' mother fussing over him in a small but neat kitchen, holding a tea towel full of ice to Bucky's split lip.

"I know Steve is a good boy," Winifred Barnes says as they watch, "but I wish he didn't get you into so many fights."

Barnes looks over at you and rolls his eyes. You can't help it. You start laughing, and Barnes joins in.

"Knock it off, you two." Cap sounds annoyed, and his cheeks flush with embarrassment.

That only makes you both laugh harder, and the image of the Barnes family kitchen disappears into mist.

After that, you settle into a routine. Cap and Barnes come to the lab every other day and go searching for another buried memory from Barnes' past. Sometimes the memories are from when they were boys. (Cap and Barnes sneaking into Ebbets Field for a ballgame. Or filching pop bottles from the neighbours and using the deposit to go to the movies.) Sometimes, they're from a quiet day during the war. (The Howlies on leave in London. Or Cap and Barnes huddled together in a tent while a snowstorm rages outside.) But whatever memory he recovers, Barnes looks increasingly at peace afterwards, and you can see the improvement in his brain scan every time.

**

You become Barnes' second friend in the future, after Cap. (He and Cap are more than friends, of course, but Barnes doesn't bring that up and you politely don't say anything when Cap gives him a peck on the cheek in front of you, or when you find the two of them holding hands in the common area.)

Barnes starts to venture away from Cap's floor a bit more often. He doesn't run anymore when you see him and Cap working out in the gym. He comes to team dinners, though he still sticks next to Cap, and only ever talks to you and Natasha. And he finally agrees to see a therapist. Diane Hall is a friend of Pepper's, and the most non-doctor-y therapist you've ever met. She makes house calls for Barnes, and you've seen her more than once in the elevator, dressed in yoga pants and a loose t-shirt, her hair in a messy bun, a friendly smile on her face.

And then one day when you find him in the common area with Steve, he asks if he can come to your lab. 

("Bucky always loved science," Cap tells you later. "He dragged me to your dad's science fair his last night before shipping out. He gave Howard shit about that flying car of his crashing every time we ran into him." You wish your father had told you about the Sergeant Barnes who was a science nerd and an irritating little shit, instead of the one who was an untouchable paragon of manly virtue.)

Barnes sits in a corner and watches you test a new version of the Iron Man gauntlet. He doesn't say anything at first, but after half an hour he starts asking questions. About power sources and force distribution. About how the microprocessors work. About how JARVIS works. By the end of the afternoon, you have him soldering connections and testing circuits. By the time the sun's gone down and Cap calls you looking for his boyfriend, Barnes is calibrating the new gauntlet's targeting system, a look of complete concentration banishing the shadows from his eyes.

"Thanks, Barnes," you say as he gets ready to head back to Cap's floor. "Any time you want to play lab assistant, come right on down. JARVIS, give Barnes full access to the labs."

"Excellent idea, sir," JARVIS says, and it sounds like your AI is as fond of Cap's cyborg as you are.

Barnes smiles even wider than he did when you said you liked him.

"Call me Bucky," he says.

"Call me Tony."

So, Barnes becomes Bucky to you, and starts showing up in the labs at all times of day, early morning to the middle of the night. He might be the only person in the Tower with worse insomnia than you. (You can always tell the nights when it's a nightmare that's woken him up. Those nights, the shadows are back in his eyes, and his flesh hand isn't quite as steady as usual. You can tell he knows you have your own nightmares keeping you awake, too, but he doesn't say any more about it than you do. You watch each other's backs, but you don't have to _talk_ about it.) 

Not only do you keep the same odd hours, but you work well together. Bucky picks up on things quickly. You only have to explain a process to him once, and he can take it over. He's even found flaws in your designs, once or twice. Small flaws, but that's more than half the engineers the work for you have ever done. 

You're grateful that Cap found Bucky, and even more grateful that he brought him back to your Tower.

**

Bucky starts looking after you.

It's small things at first. Late one night, he arrives at the lab with two drinks from the coffee shop on the 9th floor, black drip for him and a ridiculous flavoured latte for you. A week later, you wake up on the battered couch in the lab with a red blanket you don't recognized tucked around you more neatly than DUM-E could have managed. Two nights after that, Bucky wordlessly hands you a package of chocolate covered blueberries when you exhaust the Ziploc of trail mix you have stashed in your lab bench.

It's…nice.

There haven't been a lot of people who've looked after you. Not that haven't been paid for the privilege. 

Bucky seems to have liked him, but Howard Stark hadn't been much of a nurturing father, even when he wasn't drinking. And your mom had meant well, but Maria Stark's affection had been intermittently shown and never to be counted on. It had been the original Jarvis and his wife who had really looked after you. They got you your breakfast and took you to school. Jarvis taught you how to dress well and box effectively and play chess like your life depended on winning. Ana baked you cookies and bandaged your scrapes. Together, they gave you a taste of what a family could be. At least, until you got packed off to boarding school, where your father's money earned you the wrong sort of attention from other students and teachers alike. You'd learned the hard way to be wary of other kids, who were as liable to punch as to offer a friendly hand, learned not to trust adults whose assistance was a means to curry your father's favour more often than not. Not that Howard Stark would have given special notice to anyone for your sake.

These days, there's Happy and JARVIS. Your driver and an A.I. you built. And Rhodey, when he's around.

And Pepper, of course.

You tell Pepper about Bucky helping you in the lab the next time you see her.

You and Pepper have coffee every week. You may have broken up with her nearly a year ago, but she's still one of your best friends (after Rhodey), and the sharpest CEO Stark Industries has ever had (including Howard Stark.)

You've told her about Cap bringing Bucky to the Tower, told her that he killed your parents, told her about how you're helping him get his memories back. Now you tell her that he's become your new lab assistant.

Pepper is less than enthusiastic about this news.

"Do you trust him?" Pepper frowns. It's the same expression she gets when you tell her about some potentially dangerous enhancement you've made to the Iron Man suit.

"Cap trusts him."

"He's Cap's boyfriend. Of _course_ he trusts him." 

" _I_ trust him," you say, firmly. "He's a good guy."

Pepper's expression changes. It's no longer the skeptical frown. Now it's the way she looks when she thinks you're dating an asshole.

"I get that he's pretty, Tony. But don't let your crush on him get the better of you."

Wait. What?

"What? Bucky isn't pretty. Is he? And I don't have a crush. It's not a crush. Do you think it's a crush? God, Cap will destroy me if he thinks I'm trying to steal his boyfriend."

"Breathe, Tony," Pepper says. 

So, you breathe. Because you always do what Pepper says. Except when she tries to convince you not to be Iron Man, anyway.

And you tell yourself that Bucky isn't pretty. And that you don't have a crush on him. And that you're not really trying to steal Cap's boyfriend.

 

**

Your first problem is, Bucky really _is_ pretty.

After looking like a homeless vet when he first arrived at the Tower, Bucky has started fussing over his appearance the way Cap tells you he did back in the thirties. He shaves every day, which has the alarming effect of making him look almost as young as he was during the war. And every time he shows up in your lab, he's done something new with his hair: a ponytail, a braid, a bun, a topknot. You wonder if he's going through every YouTube hairstyle tutorial in existence.

He spends less time on his clothes than his hair. Black jeans, a series of long-sleeved henleys that hide his metal arm, and a well-broken in pair of combat boots seem to make up his entire wardrobe.

"He was really something in his dress uniform," Cap says longingly one evening when everyone has gathered in the common room for a team dinner. Bucky is off in a corner, talking to Bruce about physics. He's wearing one of his rattier henleys, but you have to admit the dusty red colour looks good on him.

"I'll bet," you say, and then try not to blush when Cap gives you a look. Because your second problem is you really _do_ have a crush on Bucky.

Instead of thinking about your ridiculous crush on Bucky, you give your attention to Cap.

The funny thing is, since he got Bucky back, Cap has gotten _less_ fussy about his appearance. His hair isn't a long as Bucky's, but he's let it get long enough that it's starting to curl at the ends. And he's stopped shaving entirely, though he does keep his surprisingly dark beard neatly trimmed. He hasn't changed his clothes, though. He still favours too-small t-shirts that don't do anything at all to hide his impressive physique, and too-dorky button-down collared shirts that can't hide how handsome he is. You stamp down on that thought before you develop a ridiculous crush on your crush's boyfriend.

But Cap doesn't look suspicious or annoyed. Instead he gives you a look that's all fondness.

"I don't think I've really thanked you, Tony," he says.

"You've thanked me plenty, Cap."

"Well, let me thank you again. I never thought I'd see Bucky doing so well." Cap smiles at you, and you notice his body is free of its usual tension. He looks happy in a way you hadn't seen before he found Bucky. And a happy Cap is even more ridiculously handsome than he normally is.

And that's when you realize you have a third problem. You _have_ developed a ridiculous crush on your crush's boyfriend.

"Are you okay, Tony?" Cap asks. "Do you need a glass of water?"

"I'm fine," you say, and it comes out as more of a squeak than you expected. Cap's smile fades and he looks at you like you're a tactical problem to be solved.

You're doomed.

**

The memory sessions with B.A.R.F. continue to go well. (You've stopped thinking about getting marketing to rename the fucking thing and have embraced the sheer stupidity of calling it B.A.R.F.) After every session, Bucky looks happier. More like the pictures of James Buchanan Barnes in the '30s that JARVIS has found. Not that regaining his memory cures everything. He still has insomnia, still shows up in the lab in the middle of the night looking haggard and drawn, still startles too easily. But he's getting better.

The memory you find today is one of the earliest yet. Tiny Bucky and tinier Steve play stickball in the street while toddler Becky watches adoringly from the stoop of their house. In front of you, Bucky hits a home run and Becky squeals and claps in delight. Beside you, Bucky beams, his expression open and content, while Cap clutches his hand. 

When the memory fades into mist, Bucky and Cap linger in the lab longer than usual, waiting while you power down the system.

"Anything I can do for you?" you finally ask them.

"We always do pizza and beer and movies after this," Bucky stammers out. "We're working our way through every Manhattan pizza joint that'll deliver to the Tower."

"And every good movie we missed," Cap adds.

"You should join us, Tony." Bucky is blushing slightly, embarrassed in a way you haven't seen before. "We're watching Young Frankenstein tonight."

"Sam's suggestion," Cap says. "He found out I liked Fred Astaire and told me I'd like the dance number at the end."

If you'd had any doubt before, you now know that Sam Wilson is a grade A troll.

"I don't think Frankenstein's monster quite measures up to Fred Astaire," you say. "But it's a great film."

"So, you'll come?" Bucky looks so hopeful that you can't turn him down.

"Sure, Bucky," you say. "Thanks."

Cap orders pizza from the next pizza joint on their list, you have your favourite craft beer sent up to their floor, and for a couple of hours you laugh your ass off with a couple of super soldiers. And just like that, pizza, beer and a movie after B.A.R.F. sessions becomes a new tradition.

You've been getting closer to Bucky, but now you start feeling closer to both of them. 

When Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles go over well, you introduce the pair of them to Spinal Tap. Bucky thinks it's hilarious, but Cap is mostly confused by it all.

"Wait," he says. "I don't get it. Are they a real band? Is that why it's funny? Are they a real band, Tony?"

Bucky laughs harder and chucks a stray piece of pineapple at Cap's head. (Bucky has decided that pineapple is an acceptable topping for pizza. Bucky is a _heathen_.)

Cap turns out to have a surprisingly soft side. On nights when it's his turn to choose movies, he insists on watching every version of Pride and Prejudice in existence, even the five and a half hour Colin Firth version.

"Elizabeth Bennett is my hero," he says after Jennifer Ehle's Elizabeth has quite rightly turned down Darcy's first proposal.

"And Darcy is pretty hot in those pants," Bucky adds. You both throw pillows at him, and then you both have to admit that he isn't wrong.

"Wait," Cap says one night after he's forced you both to watch Truly, Madly, Deeply (and you weren't really crying at the end, goddamn it). "There must be gay romances now, right?" And then he goes and finds Brokeback Mountain.

"Jesus Fucking Christ," Bucky says at the end. "I thought romances were supposed to have happy endings."

"Yeah, well," you say. "There aren't a lot of happy gay romances."

"But are there some?" Cap looks so hopeful, that you can't disappoint him.

"JARVIS, can you find us gay romances with happy endings."

"It would be my pleasure, sir."

JARVIS cues up Big Eden and Beautiful Thing and Maurice, and you settle in for an all-night marathon. Maurice is your favourite, even if Hugh Grant is a beautiful fucking idiot in it.

By the time Maurice has gone off with his gamekeeper and the end credits are rolling, you're all sprawled together. Cap has his head on Bucky's lap, and your cheek is resting on Bucky's shoulder, Bucky's flesh arm nestled warmly around you. You feel comfortable and secure, like this is where you belong.

Your eyes drift closed, and you've settled into that twilight state between waking and sleeping when you feel Bucky slip out from under your weight. He eases you gently onto the couch, placing your favourite cushion under your head. You feel a blanket tucked around you, and sigh contentedly.

"Aww, Stevie, look at him." Bucky's voice is a soft rumble. "Can we keep him?"

"He's not a puppy, Buck." Cap sounds slightly more serious, but only slightly. "He's not ours to keep."

"You're no fun," Bucky says, and then there's what feels like a soft kiss on the top of your head. "Sleep well, Tony."

This night, you have no bad dreams.

You wake the next morning to the smell of coffee and the sizzle of bacon. When you open your eyes, Bucky is sitting on the coffee table in front of you, a fond expression on his face, and a mug clutched in his hands.

"Good morning, sleepyhead." Bucky has been up long enough that he's had a shower, his hair still slightly damp and pulled up into a loose bun. He smiles at you, and a feeling like Christmas morning and Fourth of July fireworks swells in your chest.

"G'morning," you manage to croak out around the sudden lump in your throat.

"I thought you might need this." He holds out the mug. You sit up, shrugging off the red blanket surrounding you and holding out your hands. Both flesh and metal fingers brush yours as he passes you the mug, and a sudden shiver runs down your spine. You push down the feeling and take a sip of coffee, concentrating on the rich, bitter taste.

"Steve's making breakfast," he says, then reaches out and runs his flesh hand through your hair. You only just keep from rubbing into the touch. "Even he can't screw up bacon and eggs."

"I heard that!" Cap yells from the kitchen.

Bucky grins, then stands and holds out a hand to you.

"C'mon." He pulls you up from the couch. "If we leave him alone, he'll eat everything."

"I heard that, too!"

With Bucky's hand still on your arm, you make your way to the kitchen nook where Cap is putting plates loaded with bacon and eggs and toast on the table. Bucky pushes you onto the bench behind the table, and then he and Cap proceed to sit on either side of you.

The food is good (Cap didn't screw up the bacon and eggs, though the toast may be a bit charred at the edges), and there's talk and laughter and it honestly might be the best morning you've had in a long time. Especially since you're surrounded by both of your ridiculous crushes, and they're both constantly leaning into your side or draping an arm around your shoulders or otherwise invading every inch of personal space you have.

"Thanks, Cap," you say after you've finished the last bite of eggs.

Cap frowns and Bucky laughs.

"Call me Steve, Tony," Cap says as he elbows you in the ribs. No, that's not right…

"Okay, _Steve_." 

You elbow him back, which turns into a friendly wrestling match you know you can't possibly win without the suit. Not that you don't try, briefly pinning Steve's arms as Bucky giggles behind you. When Bucky joins in, putting you in a firm bear hug, you know you don't have a chance. You stop struggling, going limp in Bucky's arms.

You feel Bucky's breath on your neck as he leans in closer behind you, while in front of you, Steve smiles and reaches out for your shoulder. At his touch, your face goes hot, your heart beats faster in your chest, and your breath is suddenly harsh in your throat. In front of you, Steve's smile fades into concern.

"Are you okay, Tony?"

You try and respond, but for once, words fail you.

You concentrate on slowing your heart and take a deep breath. You're caught in the moment, frozen in place, needing to decide what comes next.

The safe thing to do would be nothing. But you're Tony Stark; you're Howard Stark's son; you're Iron Man. You're the leader of the Avengers (after Steve). You're the head of Stark Industries (after Pepper). You never do the safe thing. You always push for what you want. For _who_ you want.

Right now? You're absolutely sure you want Steve and Bucky. And you think that maybe, they might want you. You breathe out, and firmly grab the arm Bucky has around you with one hand, keeping him from bolting. With the other, you clutch the soft fabric of Steve's t-shirt and pull him slowly but steadily towards you. Behind you, you hear Bucky breathe out a sigh of relief as Steve's expression becomes a radiant smile.

Steve closes the last inch between you himself, leaning in close until his lips touch yours.

You're both cautious at first. Steve's lips are soft against yours, his beard a scratchy contrast that you find you don't mind in the least. When neither of you backs down, you pull him even closer and deepen the kiss. Steve's mouth is warm and tastes of coffee.

Bucky's hold on you tightens and you startle. You'd almost forgotten he was there.

"Easy, Tony," Bucky whispers in your ear. "I got ya." Then he's pressing his lips to your shoulder, to your neck, the rhythm of his movements matching yours as his hands wander your chest.

Your skin feels electrified, each touch from Steve or Bucky triggering another spark. You hiss as Steve licks at your jaw line and moan as Bucky's hand, the metal one, drifts down over your dick. You were already half-hard, but now you're rigid, your hips thrusting into Bucky's touch.

One of you bumps the table and dishes clatter. At the sound, Steve pulls away from where he's sucking bruises into your throat long enough to rasp out "bed." You all spill down the hallway to the bedroom Steve and Bucky share, taking longer than you should so none of you loses contact with the other two. Then Bucky pushes you onto the bed and you all fight to remove clothes as quickly as possible. 

Steve pulls off your t-shirt. You yank off Bucky's sleep pants. Bucky tugs off the Under Armour shirt Steve must have slept in. It's messy and frenzied and fun, up until Bucky shrugs off his shirt and you see what his clothes have hidden from you up until now. You freeze as you take in the scar tissue radiating out from the metal arm, then gently reach out and lay your palm on the join of skin and metal.

Before you can say any of the words that are fizzing in your brain-- _Jesus, Bucky_ and _sorry_ and _does it hurt_ \--Bucky extends his flesh hand and lightly touches the arc reactor in your chest with his fingertips.

"Look at that, Stevie." Bucky's voice is quiet. Awed. "I'm not the only one with a hunk of metal stuck in them in this room."

"No, you're not." Steve puts his arms around you both, and you notice his hand rubbing Bucky's shoulder with a gentling touch. "Guess I'm the odd one out now." 

"You've always been kinda odd, Stevie." Bucky grins at Steve and startles a laugh out of you. Before you know it, you're all giggling, collapsed in a pile on the bed, wrapped around each other in a way that feels good and perfect and real.

As the laughter fades, you find yourself facing Bucky, with Steve snugged tight at your back. Wisps of Bucky's hair have drifted free from its loose braid, and Bucky's eyes, stormy blue, watch you with good humour.

You reach out, cupping your hand around the line of Bucky's jaw, feeling the rasp of his morning stubble against your skin. You feel Steve wrap one arm around your waist just as Bucky leans in and kisses you thoroughly. When Bucky finally draws back and eases you down, you turn in Steve's arms and arch into him, sucking in his lower lip, letting your teeth graze across it. Bucky edges closer to you until there isn't a breath of space between you.

It's evening before any of you come up for air. 

**

You get 48 hours of peace. Forty-eight hours spent in Steve and Bucky's bed, kissing, cuddling, fucking, napping, eating. 

You learn a lot in that small amount of time.

You learn that Steve Rogers is surprisingly talented at giving blow jobs. He can deep throat your dick for longer than you'd thought possible and uses his tongue in ways that have you screaming as you come.

You learn that Bucky Barnes is the most considerate lover you've ever known. He watches carefully for your reaction to every stroke, every thrust, making sure that each touch only brings you pleasure. In return, you take extra care with him, handling him gently, making sure you bring him only satisfaction, never pain.

You learn that Steve is a bossy bottom, that he loves being fucked, and loves telling you exactly how he wants it.

You learn that sometimes Bucky just wants to be held, to be surrounded by both you and Steve, skin to skin, as he rides out a bad memory.

But it's not only sex that teaches you about Steve and Bucky. Spending two days with them teaches you other things about them.

You learn that it's Steve who's been doing Bucky's hair all this time. You watch as he finds a YouTube tutorial for five-strand braiding and then carefully plaits Bucky's hair while Bucky sits serenely under his hands.

You learn that Bucky is an even bigger nerd than you realized. He has a stack of science fiction novels three feet high on his night stand and every engineering journal there is loaded onto his StarkPad. He's quite happy to read for hours on end with his head in your lap and Steve massaging his feet.

You learn that Steve is one hell of an artist. There's a stash of sketchbooks in the living room, and when you flip through first one, you find sketch after sketch of Brooklyn brownstones, Coney Island hucksters, and Bucky Barnes, aged four to twenty-four, all of them signed SGR. It takes you a minute, but you finally realize the sketches are of every memory Bucky's recovered in your lab. 

And there's one more thing you learn about them (and you), but not right away.

Almost exactly 48 hours after you first kissed Steve Rogers, when the three of you are once again squashed together at the kitchen table, feeding each other the pancakes that Bucky made, JARVIS makes himself known.

"Sirs, I'm sorry to interrupt," JARVIS says, "but I'm receiving a call for assistance from the New York Police Department."

Steve sits up straighter, Bucky tenses, and you sigh.

"Let them know we're on the way," you tell JARVIS, even as you and Steve are moving to suit up, leaving Bucky sitting at the table surrounded by half-eaten stacks of pancakes.

"You two better come back in one piece," Bucky tells you both. His tone is light, but there are shadows behind his eyes. You realize this is the first time the Avengers have been called out since he arrived at the Tower, and you give thanks he's had this long without worrying about Steve being in a fight.

"We'll be back before lunchtime," Steve says, dropping a quick kiss on his lips before dashing off to suit up.

Bucky grabs hold of your hand and keeps you an extra few seconds.

"Watch yourself, Tony," he says and this time you can hear the worry in his voice.

"I will," you say, your heart swelling with the knowledge that Bucky Barnes is concerned about you. 

It turns out the NYPD don't need your help with an aliens-attacking-Manhattan level emergency. It's just some idiot in a knockoff Iron Man suit trying to rob a bank. Cop cars and SWAT teams cordon off two blocks of Sixth Avenue as you fly over the scene and Steve, Nat and Clint get themselves in position.

"This guy looks like an amateur," you say over the comms as you watch the metal man flail down the street towards your teammates.

"Amateurs can be dangerous," Nat responds, and it turns out she's not wrong. Their bank robber is a sloppy fighter, but he's hard to put down. His suit doesn't respond to a pulse from Nat's Widow's Bite, and he shrugs off the impact of two strikes from Steve's shield. Then you make the mistake of getting too close.

Your guard is down. You only want to shut this idiot down and get back to the Tower, back to Bucky and his pancakes. So, you accidentally let him get in a couple of lucky hits that send you tumbling into the building across from the bank.

It's not the worst hit you've ever taken, but it's bad enough. The Iron Man suit may have inertial dampeners and a built-in diagnostic and treatment system, but when it comes right down to it you're just a normal human in a fancy tin can, and when you get tossed around, it hurts.

Not that you say anything. You get up and keep fighting, double-teaming your would-be bank robber with Steve while Clint lines up a shot with a new trick arrow. This time you don't underestimate your opponent, and after one of Clint's trick arrows hobbles him with a high-tensile filament, you and Steve finally disable his suit with shield and repulsors.

Still hurting, you leave Steve and Nat to deal with the clean-up and fly over to the Tower. You have a plan: ditch the suit and hide in your own apartment for a couple of days so neither of your boyfriends, especially Bucky, see the bruises that now mark your face, your torso, your arms… They have enough to deal with; you don't want to burden them more.

But when you land on the roof and shed the suit, Bucky is waiting for you, arms crossed, one hip cocked, looking as stern as Jarvis had after you'd had your first detention for talking back to a teacher.

"That's quite a shiner you've got there, doll," he says, sounding more like the young Bucky you've seen in his memories than usual.

"It's nothing," you say, the decades-long habit of hiding any weakness from enemies and friends alike taking over your brain. "I'll be fine. I'm just going to stay in the penthouse for tonight. Tell Steve I'll see you in a day or two."

Bucky's frown deepens.

"Have I ever told you what Steve was like when he was 98 pounds of trouble?" Bucky's voice tells you he's in no mood to take shit from anyone. "He'd get in a fight and come limping back home with a bloody nose and a torn shirt and tell me it was nothing. It wasn't nothing then, and it ain't nothing now. So, I'm going to tell you what I always told him: you gotta let me look after you." His expression softens and he opens his arms to you. "You gotta let _us_ look after you, Tony."

This is more than bringing you coffee or snacks. This is even more than the tenderness Bucky shows you during sex. This is being cared for in a way that completely disarms your defences.

"Okay," you say, your voice coming out soft and quiet.

"Okay," he echoes back. Then he smiles and moves forward and envelopes you in his arms. He's careful with you, his embrace as gentle as the look in his eyes. And then he leads you to the elevator, to the floor he and Steve share. To home.

He takes you to the bathroom, clucking over the contusions that mark your body and handing you over two Advil and a glass of water. He disappears for a minute and returns holding a t-shirt and sleeping pants. The clothes are Bucky's and the pants are too long, but they're soft and comfortable and you smile as you pull them on.

"Bed," Bucky says.

"Not yet." You shake your head. "I want to wait for Steve." You hobble back to the living room, and after a few seconds you hear Bucky following you with a sigh.

"C'mere," he says, stretching out on the couch and beckoning you to him. You ease down, and stretch out on top of him, settling against him, your head cradled on his chest. You feel his arms surround you, comforting you, and feel a smile form on your lips as your eyes drift closed. Bucky's hands slowly rub your back, and you feel more than hear the beat of his heart in his chest.

You're more asleep than awake when you finally hear the elevator open, and then Steve's steady footsteps. There's a rustling sound, and then you feel something soft drawn over you. You crack one eye open and see the red blanket you slept under…was it only two days ago? The same blanket Bucky has brought down to your labs more than once.

 

"We've got you," Steve says, his voice warm and gentle, as he rests one hand on your shoulder. "We've always got you."

You've never felt quite so…protected. So cared for. And then, between one breath and the next, you learn one last thing.

This feeling you have, the one that's spreading through every cell of your body like a golden glow: it's love.

You're in love with Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes. And the way they've treated you, you're pretty sure they're in love with you.

You stir, needing to share your epiphany, but sleep has you firmly in its grasp now and you don't manage more than a murmur. Bucky stills you with one warm hand dragging through your hair.

"Rest, Tony," he says.

So, you do, slipping into a deep and restful slumber, safe in the knowledge that the men you love will be waiting for you when you wake.

**Author's Note:**

> Title cheerfully stolen from an (honestly not-that-good) film by Wim Wenders.
> 
> Csillagom = my dear (Hungarian)
> 
> There are Tumblr posts for the [story](http://trappingsofzed.tumblr.com/post/175200536690/a-collaboration-for-the-capreversebb-captain) and [art](http://araydre.tumblr.com/post/175200515707/art-to-go-with-trappingsofzed-s-amazing-story) if you'd like to reblog them.


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